Abstract

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma-associated gene 6 (NGX6) is a membrane protein primarily located in the nuclear membrane and cell membrane. Several groups reported that NGX6 gene was down-regulated in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), gastric cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer and even less in the carcinomas with metastasis. Current studies have demonstrated that NGX6 possesses various biological functions, such as regulating protein expression of related genes, involving cell signal transduction pathways, negatively controlling cell cycle progression, inhibiting angiogenesis, and increasing the sensitivity of patients to anti-cancer drugs. Some factors regulating the expression level of NGX6 gene also have been studied. The methylation of promoter of NGX6 and histone H3K9 negatively regulates its expression, similar to the function of transcription factor special protein-1 (Sp1). However, the regulatory factor early growth response gene 1 (Egr-1) is provided with positive regulation function. This review will summarize the progress of those studies on NGX6 and elucidate the potential application of NGX6 for some malignant diseases.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (81572577), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-12-0544), Overseas, Hong Kong & Macao Scholars Collaborated Researching Fund of National Natural Science Foundation of China (81428018), 111 Project (111-2-12), National 863 Plan (2012AA02A206), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2013JSJJ046), Hunan Province Natural Science Foundation of China (10JJ7003), and Open-End Fund for the Valuable and Precision Instruments of Central South University.